PRISON STRIKE IN ALABAMA AND THE FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

It's on.  The strike by incarcerated workers at an Alabama prison is scheduled to get underway on Monday.  The strikers hope the movement will spread.  During an interview with Salon, Melvin Ray, in custody at the St. Clair correctional facility explained,

“We decided that the only weapon or strategy … that we have is our labor, because that’s the only reason that we’re here.  They’re incarcerating people for the free labor....To grow the movement we have to get them to understand: You’re not giving up anything. You don’t have anything. And you’re going to gain your freedom right here....There is not even the pretense of doing anything about ‘corrections,  they’re running a slave empire...If a prison goes down for [only] a week, we may not capture another prison.  If a prison goes down for two weeks, there’s a strong possibility that you’ll capture another prison. If a prisoner strike goes down for three weeks…there’s no telling how many prisons might get in...he best-case scenario would be that every prison in the state of Alabama joins the Alabama movement – go on, shut down.”

The movement inside the prison known as the Free Alabama Movement is supported by the IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.  The IWW was approached by the Free Alabama Movement who were building themselves on the hunger strikes in Pelican Bay and Georgia with the aim of,  "building a mass nonviolent movement inside and outside of prisons to earn their freedom, and to end the racist, capitalist system of mass incarceration called The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and others."

The IWW writes:

The conditions in Alabama prisons are horrendous, packing twice as many people as are meant to be there, with everything from black mold, brown water, cancer causing foods, and general disrepair. They are also run by free, slave labor, with 10,000 people working to maintain the prisons daily, adding up to $600,000 dollars a day or $219,000,000 a year of slave labor if inmates were paid federal minimum wage, and tens of thousands more receiving mere dollars a day making products sold by the state or to private corporations.

While unique in some ways, the struggle of these brave human beings is the same as prisoners around the country, and the millions of black, brown, and working class women and men struggling to survive a system they are not meant to succeed within. These prisoners need your support, and for you to help spread the struggle.

It's a struggle with a long history. In 1901, the state of Alabama adopted a constitution , by which they created a legal structure, necessary for building an economy with “cheap labor” as its foundation.   A good source of the cheap labor Alabama decided it needed after it "lost" it's free slave labor has come from its prison system.   Inmate labor saves the state millions of dollars each year, yet the inmates receive no benefit for the labor they provide, almost no pay.

The Free Alabama Movement which is founded as a non violent organization fighting for civil and human rights lists four main issues.  These are:

• To put an end to the system of free labor within the Alabama Department of Corrections, as free labor serves no purpose towards rehabilitation and is only a slave-styled system disguised as a system of truth, justice, and punishment for crime. The reality is that free labor of Alabama’s prison system is a continuation of the enslavement and exploitation of black, brown, and poor white people. The name changed, but cheap or free slave labor is still the game.

• To put an end of inhumane living conditions, under which Alabama’s prisoners are forced to live, which stems from Alabama’s choice to warehouse large amounts of people, overpopulating all of its facilities and refusing to put the health of the inmate above cost. These type of living conditions only make incarceration (more) dangerous, and overcrowding contributes to (more) violence, disease outbreaks, and an overall unhealthy living environment. Every aspect of an inmate environment is substandard; from food and water to health care.

• To abolish life without parole sentences and expedite the process of overhauling Alabama’s current parole system; in order to release more deserving people. Life without parole is a cruel sentence which provides the inmate with no incentive to seek rehabilitation.

• To put an end to certain laws targeting certain specific race groups, which is followed by outrageous and arbitrary sentencing. One prime example is Alabama’s drive-by shooting laws, which have been codified in the capital murder statute of 13a-5-40. Studies show that Alabama, with intent, designed these laws for young black males, as when white people have committed the same exact crime, it has been renamed “road rage.” Road rage for one and a full fledged congressional act for the other. Look up Shirley Henson and Phillip Fondren. Read House Joint Resolution 575..

They also make clear what they fighting for:

• We want an end to free labor. Providing free labor deprives us, our families, and our communities of valuable resources, which should be provided to us for our labor. Putting an end would offset the many costs incurred by inmates for every service the Department of Corrections provides.

• We want an end to overcrowding and two-men/women cells. We want a reduction in the prison population, consistent with its design to “humanely” house approximately 16,000 inmates. Today it houses approximately 30,000 inmates – almost double its capacity. It has been a topic in the media for over a decade, yet there has been no effective strategy implemented. Overcrowding contributes to the inhumane living conditions, the sub-par food and water, as well as to the increase in violent altercations.

• We want control of our money and the money our families send us.

•  We want a state-wide reform in the youthful offender law and the creation of an adult first time offense law.

• We want life-without-parole sentences abolished.

 One prisoner involved in the work stoppage and who describes himself as an anarchist writes :

I’m Michael and yes, I’m locked down in one of Amerika’s many prisons in the state of Alabama. But that does not excuse me from the struggle for a better world. And I believe that anarchism is the best alternative to what exists now. I believe this without reservations. Anarchism is not about building state power, but rather, destroying the state and building new humyn relationships based on mutual aid and cooperation and freedom.

Right now there is a struggle going on in Alabama’s prisons demanding a change in the horrendous, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions in the prisons. In the prison I’m at, Holman, birds fly around the kitchen dropping bird shit on prisoners and/or their food, industrial light fixtures are falling from the ceiling injuring at least one prisoner seriously, during the winter months the showers are cold, the dorms are also cold in the winter, inadequate medical care, inadequate outdoors exercise time, inadequate nutrition, harassment of family members during visiting hours, and a host of other serious problems too numerous to list (see Justice or Just Business for more). But most of all, we are fighting and struggling for our dignity and humanity.

Prisoners have very few options against the prison system. We have the options of: (1) filing lawsuits, (2) rioting, (3) hunger strikes, (4) work strikes. These four are the most common practices used by prisoners throughout the world. A work strike is what is going down in Alabama right now. The reason a work strike was chosen is simple. To cause the state to lose the profits it rests in off of prisoners’ labor and to force them into making the changes in the conditions that’s demanded.

In January 2014, prisoners in Alabama staged a work strike demanding changes in the laws, sentencing, and prison conditions. The present work strike is a continuation of the January 2014 work strike.

The Free Alabama Movement and the IWW's Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee  ask you to:

• Create an Incarcerated Workers Solidarity Committee in your area to raise money, take action, and spread the word of this struggle, including to local prisons.

• Amplify the voices of incarcerated workers by posting this and future updates to your website, facebook, email lists, and so on

• Join our email list so as to be kept up to date and amplify future updates. Contact us at iwoc@riseup.net and like us on facebook: www.facebook.com/incarceratedworkers

• Donate money to the Free Alabama Movement & Incarcerated Workers Organizing Cmt: https://fundly.com/iww-incarcerated-workers-organizing-committee-support-the-free-alabama-movement

• Join the IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee

Contact them at iwoc@riseup.net. Solidarity and be in touch!

The IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee in partnership with the Free Alabama Movement

• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-alabama-movement/1428198110745581
• https://www.facebook.com/incarceratedworkers
• http://www.freealabamamovement.com
• www.iww.org

Thus for Prison Friday, Scission calls on you to support this struggle.  The following is from  Revolution News.

Incarcerated Workers Launch Nonviolent Work Strike against “New Jim Crow” across Alabama Prisons

AMERICAS, USA

Official Press Release:

Contacts: Jim Faulkner, 601-260-8127
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, Industrial Workers of the World
iwoc@riseup.net
Ms. Antonia Brooks-Shaw, 256-783-1044
Free Alabama Movement
freealabamamovement@gmail.com

April 18, 2014

Incarcerated Workers Launch Nonviolent Work Strike against “New Jim Crow” across Alabama Prisons

Peaceful Protest Demands Wages for Labor, End to Overcrowding and Inhumane Conditions, Transformation of American Justice System

Press Conference and Rally: 4pm Saturday, April 19th, St. Clair Correctional Facility, 1000 St. Clair Road, Springville, AL 35146

BIRMINGHAM, AL– Hidden from public view by barbed-wire fences and windowless concrete walls, a movement is brewing in Alabama that could change America. This Monday, hundreds of men incarcerated in St. Clair and prisons across the state will stop work, adding economic muscle to their demands for wages for their labor, an end to overcrowding and inhumane conditions, an end to the “New Jim Crow” of mass incarceration of African-Americans, and the repurposing the prison system as a tool for genuine rehabilitation in a wounded world. The demands of the peaceful strike action are outlined in detail in the Education, Rehabilitation, and Re-Entry Preparedness Bill (FREEDOM Bill), which was presented to the state legislature by the Free Alabama Movement in January.

Melvin Ray, spokesperson for the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) said, “When we look at our situations inside of the Alabama Department of Corrections, we have no choice but to engage in this nonviolent and peaceful protest for civil and human rights. We sleep with rats and roaches. We work for free and eat slop unfit for human consumption. We serve decades in prison solely to provide free labor and without any real prospect for parole, and without any recourse to the courts for justice or redress of grievances. Our mothers, wives, and daughters must expose their breasts and panties just to visit us. This should not be acceptable to anyone. Prison is supposed to be a place where people go to work out issues and return to society. But when there is no focus on education or rehab but solely on profit margins, human suffering is inevitable. ADOC is about free labor and the new slavery no one wants to talk about. That is no longer going to work for the 30,000 of us who suffer because of it.”

The Alabama prison system is notoriously overcrowded. Built with a capacity of 16,000, the state’s penitentiaries currently imprison over 30,000 individuals, with catastrophic results for health and well-being of the incarcerated. Over 10,000 of the 30,000 men and women imprisoned by the Alabama Department of Corrections are forced into unpaid labor, in other words, slavery.

Unpaid labor includes cooking and cleaning, production of license plates, furniture, chemicals, and linens, and farming. At minimum wage, the total value of this slave labor is calculated at $600,000 per day, or $219 million per year. The slavery analogy is more than metaphorical: African-Americans comprise only 26% of Alabama’s population, but make up more than 60% of the prison population due to reactionary legislation and racist targeting of communities of color. Reports of beatings and systemic rape and sexual abuse of women inmates by guards at Tutwiler State Prison have surfaced in the media over the last year.

The men and women caught in the jaws of this infernal machine have begun uniting across racial and religious lines in a movement for systemic change. In January, FAM successfully organized a two-week strike involving over 3,000 men and women at four facilities. The strike was so effective that guards were forced to take over cleaning and cooking duties. On Monday, April 20th, the imprisoned workers plan to do it again, this time with the backing of a labor union.

The workers are supported by the Industrial Workers of the World, a storied labor union known for outside-the-box organizing strategies and for welcoming workers into its ranks that other unions exclude. The IWW has come to the aid of imprisoned workers before, bringing a petition for union recognition of a bargaining unit of four hundred incarcerated workers to the State of Ohio in 1987.

“A worker is a worker, whether in prison or not, and a group of workers is a union, whether recognized by the state or not. Incarcerated workers are some of the most exploited in the United States. We are doing everything we can do to support them, and call on all people of conscience in this country to join this movement to end the New Jim Crow and abolish the prison industrial complex,” says Jim Faulkner, a member of the IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.

The movement brewing in Alabama is part of a rising tide of resistance to racist mass incarceration in America. In December 2010, incarcerated workers in Georgia staged a strike, shutting down several prisons for weeks and demanding an end to forced prison labor. Following a smaller hunger strike in 2011, upwards of 30,000 individuals in the California prison system went on hunger strike in July 2013, protesting administrative use of solitary confinement – a practice denounced by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch. Last month nearly 1,200 immigrant detainees in the privately-run Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington staged a hunger strike to protest poor living and working conditions. This wave of prison protest has not been limited to the United States. Prison work stoppages forced several Canadian federal prison into lock-down this past October after the Canadian government announced prison labor wage cuts.

Repression of the Free Alabama Movement has already begun. Holman prison warden Walter Meyers has told imprisoned workers that they can bring knives to work with them, and that if they stab anyone trying to stop them from working, he will make sure they won’t get locked up for long. Prison administrators at Holman and Bibbs prisons have sought to sow division and stir up prejudices by spreading an untrue rumor that the strike is being organized by Muslims, a calculated ploy to turn Christians in the prison against the movement. They have are also attempting to bribe the workers out of striking with a free barbecue provided by a local religious leader.

So far, the incarcerated workers have maintained their unity and solidarity. In the days, weeks, and months ahead, they will need all the support they can get.

Via: IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee

Note: This morning, Salon ran an interview with F.A.M founder Melvin Rey

Also, there will be a “Rally and Candlelight Vigil to Support the Non-Violent and Peaceful Protest for Civil and Human Rights for the Men and Women in Alabama’s PRISONS,” as posted on the Free Alabama Movement’s Website:

We invite all to attend this event at KELLY INGRAM PARK in Birmingham, Alabama on April 26, 2014, beginning at 3:00 p.m. until 7:00 pm. The Candlelight Vigil will begin at 6:50 p.m., as we will light candles for the men and women incarcerated. We are protesting the mass incarceration and targeting of black youth, sentencing and parole reform, free labor, and long-term incarceration without affording any opportunities for education, rehabilitation, and re-entry programs. We will have a copy of our BILL for Education, Rehabilitation and Re-Entry Preparedness, our book, t-shirts, arm bands, and more.